In the year 2009, Andrew "Redigit" Spinks began work on game Super Mario Brothers X. Gradually the game gathered a following among fans of the Mario game series.

Perhaps, in my opinion, it is one of the best all time fan games about Mario. In-game game-plays from games such as Super Mario Bros, by Super Mario Brothers 2, SMB 3, Super Mario World, Legend of Zelda, etc. are integrated. The built-in level editor allows not only to edit levels, along with a engine to debug them in real time, but also allows the player to create full-fledged episodes with a plot!

Unfortunately in 2011, Redigit received a call from the lawyers of Nintendo. Who threatened him, and demanded he remove SMBX and stop any further development. After some time, the supermariobrothers.org domain was also taken over by Nintendo. So such a remarkable project was killed.

But even so, it has still been played. A lot of "episodes" have been made for SMBX , and the game is still in demand. Currently the game overloads the processor to 100% even when the user is not in action.

There were attempts to revive the project, but they failed.

The main mistake - the game was published UNDER the UNTWISTED BRAND.And Redigit was making money off SMBX with distribution of ads in installer, on forums and website. I.e. I parasitized on a brand. Therefore Nintendo didn't like this and that's why SMBX was shut down.

Now about the project A few months before January of 2014 I had a desire to recreate SMBX, and in doing so, give it a new life. The game that inspired me is called Hedgewars,a clone of the game called "Worms" by the company Team17. I decided to create a new game engine, with the source code open under the GPLv3 License.

One of the most important parts in my opinion - the project's NAME. Because of the NAME of the project, Redigit came to grief with Nintendo. Therefore the engine which I plan to publish, shan't be named "Mario", the new name will be a replacement to this. BUT, the engine will be completely compatible with SMBX, and that means: It would be possible to use SMBX files with my engine.

For this project I have decided to use Qt and SDL libraries along with С++. I want to make the engine cross-platform: for Windows, GNU/Linux, and MacOS. The project will live if it is libre, open source.

Development of a game engine - is very responsible work and therefore the time and desire for this purpose is necessary.The very first stage - to completely research the SMBX engine, which is complete.Second stage - developing the new Editor of Levels, Worlds and NPC txt user configurations, which is almost complete.And third - develop the engine, which is in progress.

Well if we ARE trying to get away from the name mario, maybe we should get away from other things?Like graphics.SoundMusicIt Nintendo is rather "iffy" about anyone using their graphics and such.I like what you have so far and what your aim is... Bottom line.. if you want some custom graphics and so forth, it can be done.I'm already working on some custom stuff so that Nintendo can't say anything.Even working on some new charecter sprites to replace mario and company.But i do look forward to this when it's done.And i am SO glad you want this to work with Linux... there is not enough software like this for Linux.